Holden was born in Acrington, Lancashire, England, UK. He earned his Bachelor of Arts Honors Degree in Graphic Design (Film) in Liverpool and moved a short time later to London where he worked as inker and painter at Cucumber Studios before his position as post production supervisor for television and commercials. Together with Keith Graham he founded the production company Moon + Parrot Productions in 1982 which was later renamed into The Holden Film Company in 1986. Holden moved to Los Angeles in 1989 and became a visual effects artist for Digital Domain in 1994. Between 1997 and 1999 he worked as senior digital compositor and visual effects supervisor for the company Click 3X LA, followed by freelance work for companies such as Digital Magic, Rhythm & Hues, Pacific Ocean Post, Entity FX, Zoic Studios, R!ot, and CBS Digital. Holden received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in the category Outstanding Achievement in Special Visual Effects in 1989 for his work on the thirtysomething episode "Michael Writes A Story".

Holden's work as digital compositor can be seen in episodes of The X-Files, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Kindred: The Embraced (1996), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), and Smallville and in feature films such as the television science fiction film Journey to the Center of the Earth (1993, with Don Greenberg, Adam Howard, Scott Rader, Laurie Resnick, Steven J. Scott, Greg Stuhl, and Joe White), the science fiction comedy Coneheads (1993), the television movie Titanic (1996), the action film Dante's Peak (1997), the science fiction film The Fifth Element (1997), the science fiction film Contact (1997), the musical Moulin Rouge! (2001), the action comedy Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), the fantasy adventure Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), for CIS Hollywood on the science fiction thriller Paycheck (2003), and the comedy Freezerburn (2005) for which he provided the music with his 2003 founded band XUK from their 2005 album Love Hits ...like a cricket bat-out-of-hell.

More recently he worked as digital compositor and 2D artist on the comedy The Proposal (2009), the documentary From the Midst of Pain (2009), and the drama The Social Network (2010).